Last year, the Colorado women's basketball team learned how stingy Arizona State can be on defense.

On Friday, the Buffaloes showed the Sun Devils they can play that game, too.

Chucky Jeffery's 24th career double-double and a stellar defensive effort led No. 21 Colorado to a 57-43 victory against the Sun Devils at Coors Events Center. The Buffs (14-2, 3-2 Pac-12) have won three consecutive conference games for the first time since Feb. 23-March 2, 2011, when they were in the Big 12.

Jeffery finished with 19 points and 16 rebounds -- one shy of her career high -- but it was the defense of the Buffs that proved to be the difference.

"I think we're one of the top defensive teams in the Pac-12 right now, so I think that's a pretty good staple to have as a team," Jeffery said. "It's going to be hard for teams to score against us."

CU came into the week ranked No. 2 in the Pac-12 in scoring defense. After holding Utah to 43 points on Sunday, CU has held conference opponents under 45 points in consecutive games for the first time since Feb. 8-12, 1997. That CU team won the Big 12 championship.

Arizona State (10-7, 2-3) was the latest victim of CU's defense. Of the four Pac-12 opponents CU has faced this year, three of them have scored their season-low against the Buffs. The other one was 6th-ranked Stanford and the only teams to hold the Cardinal to fewer points were No. 3 Connecticut, No. 7 California and No. 19 South Carolina.

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On Friday, CU took the Sun Devils out of their game and forced them to shoot from the outside. ASU was 8-for-26 from 3-point range, taking by far a season-high number of shots beyond the arc. The Sun Devils were just 5-for-29 from 2-point range.

"They score a lot of baskets at the rim, they score a lot of layups at the rim," CU head coach Linda Lappe said of ASU. "One of our goals was to give up less than 10 layups. It was a huge key to the game. Even when they started hitting some outside shots, we stayed steady, we didn't panic. I thought that allowed us to pull away in the second half."

Hitting the outside shot kept ASU in the game early. In fact, the Sun Devils were 6-for-13 from 3-point range before intermission with Haley Videckis going 3-for-4. Videckis tied her season high with 11 points before halftime.

Back-to-back 3-pointers to close the first half gave ASU a 26-22 lead at the break.

"I think we played good defense both halves, it's just that we had to recognize who was scoring," Jeffery said. "What they gave us that we didn't really recognize was (Videckis) when she was hitting outside shots. So, we just made adjustments at halftime. It wasn't a big adjustment, but we just had to recognize where the shooters were."

Videckis was scoreless after halftime. So were most of her teammates for much of the half.

The Buffs outscored the Sun Devils 22-6 during the first 11:40 of the second half. ASU went 1-for-17 from the floor during that stretch, helping CU to open up a 44-32 lead. CU also snagged 18 of the first 22 rebounds of the second half.

Rebounding, especially on defense, proved pivotal. The Buffs finished with a 47-31 advantage on the boards and held ASU to just 11 offensive rebounds -- 7.5 below their average in Pac-12 play.

"We knew we had to go box out and then go get the rebounds and not just let them try to come to us," said CU freshman Arielle Roberson, who had a career-high 11 rebounds to go with her seven points. "Since our focus was on boxing out, we did a really good job as a team doing that."

CU did a good job in most areas against the Sun Devils, but its defense was relentless. After halftime, the Sun Devils made just 13.3 percent of their shots (4-for-30) and CU out-rebounded them 27-15.

Offensively, the Buffs did better than they did in either game against the Sun Devils last year. The Buffs scored just 43 and 47 points in those losses. This time, the Buffaloes' defense helped create a lot more scoring chances and the Buffs capitalized, especially in the second half.

"In the second half, we did a much better job of playing at the tempo we wanted to play at and I thought that helped us score a lot more in the second half," Lappe said.

Notable

Senior captain Meagan Malcolm-Peck missed just the third game of her career. She hurt her shoulder against Utah on Sunday and was unable to play against ASU. ... Jeffery passed Sandy Bean (1978-82) to move into 13th place on CU's all-time list for field goals made, with 535. ... Jen Reese had a nice game for CU, with eight points, seven rebounds and three steals. ... CU out-scored the Sun Devils 22-8 in the paint.

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